Category Archives: About the Grammar Vandal

I’m back from New Mexico! Here are a few things that I learned on my trip:

White Sands National Monument is unbelievable. If you visit the state, you must visit this place! It’s sand — technically, gypsum — but it looks like snow! Check it out:

I noticed that most of the rural landscape looks just like the scenery in No Country for Old Men. A few days later, I found out that the movie was filmed primarily in New Mexico!

If you are a RENT fan, or even if you’re only slightly familiar with the show, you will have the song “Santa Fe” stuck in your head for the duration of your visit. (It didn’t help that we also stayed at a Holiday Inn, or that it began to snow on our last day…)

I’m glad to return to the blog. Thanks for your nice emails during my time away!

I was delighted to hear from reader Christina, a fan from Germany. There will be more mentioned about Christina later, but for now, check out this great stuff.

I asked her how she came across my blog, and she told me that there was actually a write-up about me in the October 2007 issue of Spotlight magazine! Spotlight is a magazine designed for adults looking to improve their language, and it’s published in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.

It’s basically sound bites from the Boston Globe’s feature, but it’s new stuff — and I loved it! Check it out:

I have now finally, finally, finally made the long-awaited switch to WordPress, at the insistence of many of my friends (particularly Ryan). I started working on this a few months ago, but it was the horrible cold that I’ve had for the past few days that gave me the gift of time to actually finish it!

What do you think? Are any of you largely for or against Blogger or WordPress?

Do you like the layout? The image at the top was designed by my friend (and WordPress lover) Andy over the summer.

At this point in time, what I’m looking forward to most is being able to write posts in advance and arrange for them to post at certain times. This way, I’ll be able to get posts in every day, even on the days when I’m out of the house from 8:00 AM until midnight or later.

Back when my blog was in its nascent stage, even before I made it public, I took pictures of errors at Six Flags New England and posted them on here. (There were quite a few, and I guarantee it wasn’t creative advertising.) My friend Holly went to Six Flags on Sunday for Fright Fest, and she took a picture of an interesting gravestone:

Wow. Maybe one of the art directors decided to let his little nephew stencil a few gravestones and accidentally got them into the mix.

I just can’t get over the fact that not only is it wrong, but it alternatively uses both “you’re” and “your” to mean the contraction “you’re.”

I don’t think that the intention was to have it be wrong on purpose — every other gravestone is correct. Besides, if they meant for it to look wrong, wouldn’t they have done more things — mixed up words, spelled words incorrectly, written letters backwards — to make it look even worse?

Scientists have been saying it since the park opened, and I guess it’s true: riding Superman really does kill your brain cells. (For the record, I didn’t go on it for that very reason. I’ll fly through the Swiss Alps while strapped to a parachute, but I won’t go on a brain-damaging roller coaster like that.)